In central London, if you walk off Oxford Street onto Henrietta Place, hidden behind
Debenhams' slinky undulations, there is a building with quite a different character.
Built in 1971 and designed by Michael Blampied, Welbeck Street car park is a sight
to behold. And it has an axe hanging above it in the form of a new hotel, the planning
permission for which has already been granted.

This is unquestionably Brutalist architecture: plain, unfinished concrete, strong
lines, functionality - it's all there. It perfectly embodies the rejection of the
sleek modernist architecture of the previous generation, the gleaming idealism of
which was at odds with the harsh realities of late 60s and early 70s Britain. But
it is also an oddly beautiful, spellbinding building, more so that it is now living
out its final days, a relic of a pre-bling era. And I urge you to go and visit it
while you still can. Its concrete raindrops are like chain-mail armour, rhythmic
like an Op-art painting. It is utterly other-worldly, a building that doesn't seem
to belong on the swanky, consumerist driven environs of Oxford Street. It is a kind
of gritty, urban monument to pre-massified London, before London became a product
for international consumption. Modern, muscular, punchy, Welbeck Street car park
was created in an era less luxurious and less comfortable than our own.

The building is based around an interlocking diamond shape of, typically for a Brutalist
building, raw concrete (nearby Centre Point is another example of this interlocking
system). The rhythmical effect is enhanced by the triangular non-spaces between the
diamonds, which are their inverted twins; the building is therefore a construction
of criss-crossing diagonal lines and non-space. It's almost monotone black and white.
Since it was built as a car park as opposed to an office building, there was no need
for glass in the windows - rather, the non-spaces become the windows, letting the
outside in and the inside out. It is like a concrete cage to keep the cars locked
up in, a kind of concrete security chain-link fence. It is windows and decoration
and security all at once, form following function. It's too grand a building to simply
have been a car park. It's heroic. The architect Sam Jacob has said of Welbeck Street
car park: "It is part of a small gang, a batch of buildings produced in a small window
when car parks were treated as civic monuments, significant structures that expressed
the modernity of the moment". (1)

Being Brutalist, it is uncompromising, unremitting, with no frills. So maybe it is
somehow fitting that it is to go out as the consequence of something so utterly conformist,
obedient and servile as a high-end hotel, built for luxury as opposed to function.
I expect that if it could, it would laugh at the irony, at the banality of its successor.
Brutalism indeed. Better luck has befallen Preston bus station car park, another
Brutalist marvel, having recently been declared a Grade II-listed historic building,
and therefore safe from demolition (one would hope). But of course, Preston doesn't
suffer from London's cannibalising success. In the words of Jonathan Meades: "Britain
is once again being architecturally cleansed in favour of timidity and insipidity."
(2)

London is clearing out an architectural gem to replace it with a money-spinner. Where
Welbeck Street car park was a symbol of early 1970s urban realism, a five-star hotel
is a sign of our status-driven times. I'm not against progress, and I'm aware that
London needs to continually develop in order to survive; however, its architectural
practice of killing its parents is often troubling.